Everyday adventures with unruly data / Melanie Feinberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Feinberg, Melanie, 1970- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Information technology--Social aspects.

Information technology.

Knowledge management.

Information organization.

Information society.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 318 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2022]

Summary:

"An engaging look at how we think about data in our everyday lives, from shopping for an appliance to stepping on a scale to cooking rice in another country"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: A Spirit of Adventure

Wayfaring and Transport

Data in the Everyday

Chapter Structure: Adventure and Reflection

Thematic Sequence and Connecting Arguments

This Book as Methodological Invitation

Antecedents

1. Serendipity

Adventure: A Trip to the Library

An Uncomfortable Encounter with an Enthusiastic Librarian

An Enchantingly Strange Museum

A Call Number That I Can't Find

Danish Supermarkets

Two Serendipitous Books

Reflection: How Do We Attend to Data in the Everyday?

The Intellectual Heritage of Knowledge Organization

Reciprocal Themes across Multiple Disciplines

Information Design, Power, and Accountability

2. Objectivity

Adventure: That Scale Must Be Wrong

Stepping on a Scale

Step Counters on Smartphones

The Allure of Numbers

Measurement and Convention

Reflection: How Is the Quantitative Not?

The Two Cultures of the Sciences and the Humanities

Human Judgment in Quantitative Measurement

The Conduit Metaphor and the Mathematical Theory of Communication

Objectivity as That Which Speaks for Itself

The Human Work of Data Collection

3. Equivalence

Adventure: When Is Butter

Lurpak Butter in Denmark and Lurpak Butter in the United States

Thin Mints in California and Thin Mints in Texas

American Coke and Mexican Coke

Editions of Hamlet in North American Library Catalogs

Editions of Mr Jelly's Business in the Austlit Catalog

Reflection: Is This Thing the Same as That One?

What One Thing Might Constitute

Disciplinary Assumptions about Information Things (Documents)

Decisions about Things in Data Design and Implementation

4. Interoperability

Adventure: I Can't Cook Rice in Copenhagen

Cooking Rice

French Bread in Different Languages

The Provenance of an Afternoon Pastry.

A Thai Robot Curry Taster

Protocols for Removing Dangerous Posts from Social Media

Reflection: How Does the Same Process Lead to Different Outcomes?

Scientific Reproducibility as an Unsettled Concept

The Challenge of Semantic Data Interoperability

Empirical Outcomes in the Pursuit of Interoperable Data

The Imperative of Data Criticism

5. Taxonomy

Adventure: Not That Hierarchy

A Vile Hierarchy

The Vile Hierarchy, Revised

That Jumble Drawer in Your Kitchen

Confessions of a Data Snob

"User-Centered" Taxonomy

Reflection: How Does Classificatory Structure Matter?

A Constellation of Fundamental Data Concepts

Taxonomies and Data Users

Taxonomy Development as Design Rather Than Discovery

Structural Constraint as an Invitation to Creativity

6. Labels

Adventure: A Mistake on My Mastercard

A Mistaken Name That I Like

Greece and Macedonia

Mrs., Miss, and Ms

A Magic Wand

Orientals, the Yellow Peril, and the Chinese Virus

Reflection: What's in a Name?

Common-Sense Distinctions between Concepts and Labels

Distinctions between Concepts and Labels in the Practical Literature of Controlled Vocabularies

Empirical Realities of Extracting Concepts from Documents

Reconfiguring Concept-Label Relationships

7. Locality

Adventure: Have You Ever Been to Louisiana?

A Poet Talking about American Racism

Height Measurement at the Doctor's Office

Race and Ethnicity in the US Census

Race and Ethnicity in Online Dating Sites

A Novelist Talking about Danish Racism

Reflection: How Is Data Situated?

Constraint and Creativity in Cognitive Categorization

Local Conditions and Cognitive Prototypes

Historical Efforts to Standardize Data Collection across Locations

Data Creation as an Assertion of Values (An Extended Example from Library Cataloging Data).

Cherishing the Humanity in Our Data

Conclusion: Still Life With Data

Notes

References

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Feinberg, Melanie, 1970- Everyday adventures with unruly data.

ISBN:

0-262-37146-4

0-262-37145-6

OCLC:

1333708321